I like this archival footage of the Who when they were the High Numbers. This from 1964, doing their hard R&B stuff, the Mod kids all dancing. In Mod, a "high number" was a player, basically, in the slang -- you could be a "high number," a "big ticket," and a "face" (or best of all, an "ace face"). Love archival footage of Mod kiddies, doing their thing. Fun!
That's what all the "face" and "ticket" talk is about in "I'm the Face." I'm the Face is basically saying "I'm tops!" in Mod parlance.
Roger Daltrey's conception of the band was much narrower than it came to be with the Who. He held them squarely in that R&B mode, covering Motown tunes, etc., until the band rebelled against his leadership and the band ultimately became leaderless (and better). Daltrey's iron fist early on kept them together as a unit during the vital formative years, when the rampant drug use of the other three members (esp. speed and booze) threatened to derail them. But the rebellion of the other three allowed the band to break free of its Mod roots and truly hit the upper stratosphere, where they needed to be.
